Vegas Vs. Final Cut Pro
 

Hi folks, I've been a PC user for long time, and use Vegas 4.0 which I really like, but I frequently see reviewers start with the preface - "Of course, Final Cut Pro is the standard for NLE.

So....pardon this question, but what is the difference between Vegas 4.0 and Final Cut Pro?

I don't really want to learn about MAC's but if it is head and shoulders above Vegas, then I would think about it.

I really appreciate your help.

Thanks,
Milt Lee
Lee Productions

They are both very capable NLE's. Naturally the biggest difference is FCP runs on Macs and Vegas runs on PCs. Functionally, you will find that they are both very similar. Operationally, they accomplish the same tasks in different ways. If you already know Vegas, you'll have to "unlearn" some things and figure out how FCP does it.

If you're looking for hardware support, FCP has more. If you're looking for format agnostic, Vegas has more. If you want the best audio, Vegas wins. If you want EDLs, FCP will win. It's really just a matter of edit flow, what hardware you are using, and which you like best.

EDl's? I don't think I know what that means. In SAWSTUDIO, that would mean Edit List - is it the same in the video world?

I do like Vegas, and I especially like the audio capablities. At some point, I expect to be doing doc's that I want to show on Public Television, so I want to have something that I can output in a broadcast standard. Is that as issue or is it really just a matter of the right hardware to output to?


Thanks,
Milt Lee

EDL = edit decision list.

FCP can work with more formats than Vegas, like cutting film, editing SD/uncompressed, and HD. Not sure how you would capture uncompressed or HD on a Vegas system.

DV, which Vegas can handle, is broadcast standard if shot right and if the content is good. Some stations may require a different format but you can do a dub and it should still be broadcast quality.

Actually, other than the cinema world, Vegas manages more formats. It just doesn't have the hardware support for the formats, but it edits far more formats than FCP, including 1080i/p. Granted, without the hardware, you are only seeing 4-8 fps, but there are ways of editing for uncompressed HD and having reference files that work just fine.
FCP is a great tool. I use it enough to be able to demonstrate it fairly effectively, but Vegas is my main tool. If I was doing a news show and needed it NOW and rendering wasn't an option, then I'd probably use Avid with hardware or FCP with hardware. But...I always have time to render since the only deadlines I get under are the ones I specify for clients. With several machines and a few RAIDS, it's no big thing for me to set Vegas to rendering a project while I work on a different machine, or even the same machine with Vegas running in the background.
FCP doesn't have the streaming, audio, or depth of compositing tools that Vegas has, partially because Apple doesn't want to kill sales of some of their other tools. Compressor is a good tool though....so can't discount it.
FCP 4 full edition is actually a very nice value. but it's Mac only, non-intuitive, and workflow-stifled, IMO.

Hmm... this thing about formats support, it seems to me Final Cut Pro can import and export any QuickTime supported codec, and that's really a very wide range of options.

And even though the program's audio tools are somewhat basic (I use Digital Performer for serious audio), it comes with SoundTrack which seems a very capable tool for multitrack audio and setting up loops, and it also includes Peak LE which is a very good audio editor. Now of course it is not as good as having more audio capability in the program itself. But they seem to work together quite painlessly.

Having said that, I must add that even though I use Digital Performer for music production and love it's realtime effects processing, I have never actually needed to do something for a video project which could not be done in FCP. It supports OS X's standard audio plug-in architecture and the included plug-in's are quite good. Editing the audio level in the timeline is very intuitive, very similar to Premiere. All in all I am happy with FCP's audio capabilities.

By FCP handling more formats I mean you can capture and edit the footage. As far as I know, Vegas can't capture uncompressed or HD. Can you?

Uncompressed: yes. QuickTime has an uncompressed codec and also most capture hardware includes codecs that work in tandem with their hardware from within any QuickTime savvy application, whether they are lossless or near-lossless.

HD: yes, basically same answer. There is even a new codec called pixlet which let's you work near-lossless HD without additional hardware but you need a killer fast computer for this to be practical, just like on the PC.

One thing that has not been fully addressed is direct MPEG2 support through QuickTime, so HDV-acquired video or delivery needs additional software.

I find FCP's greatest strength is LiveType.

LiveType has to be the best Titler that I have used to date... other than that Vegas is a winner.

Regards,

Chris

Vegas also supports any Quicktime/win codec available in addition to DirectShow and proprietary.

I am a regular Final Cut Pro user and I launched Vegas Video 4 on a friend's PC the other day. It made zero sense. No separate viewer and canvas windows? Why is the timeline so "thick", short and small? I imported a Quicktime DV file, messed with it a bit and figured some of it out. I really didn't find anything that made it better than Final Cut Pro though. No 3 way color corrector would be the straw that broke the camel's back for me. If Vegas has it, I didn't find it. Also, what is this I hear about Vegas having better audio capabilities? Please explain. Once I was finished with my little screwing-around session, I exported a short, 30 second 720x480 DV Quicktime, full quality 48Khz stereo audio. Render...... render..... render.... and I had no effects! It took it nearly 10 minutes just to export the file. This was with a 1.5 Ghz AMD with 512MB of RAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive with plenty of space.

I'd like to know more about Vegas, just so I can be more versatile myself, though. I had to be doing something wrong, right?

If you're very familiar with FCP, Vegas WOULD be different (that's one of the things we LIKE about Vegas). Rendering from/to Quicktime is definitely slower than using native DV-AVI files because it has to use the quick-time engine installed on that computer.

Yes, Vegas has a 3 way color corrector. You just need to click on the Video FX tab on the lower left side of the screen, click on "Color Corrector" from the list, and then drag any of the presets to the video clip. Alternately, you can click on the FX button on the right-hand edge of the clip and choose "Color Corrector" from the list that appears. Finally, you can right-click a video clip and choose "Media FX" from which you can choose the Color Corrector tool.


p.s. It's called Vegas 4. Previous versions were called Vegas Video because there was a separate Vegas Audio version available.

Hmmm...quicktime?

So if I wanted to make my short videos into quicktime versions, in order to play them on the web (for all those without WMP) I could do this right in Vegas - no need for the Quicktime Pro from Apple?

thanks,
Milt Lee

Yes. Vegas can handle quicktime. Just download the free version from Apple's site, choose a "custom" install, and pick EVERYTHING. Vegas requires the authoring tools to be installed in order to used quicktime files.

Remember that Vegas started as an multi-track audio program in version 1. It's roots are audio. It is still a full blown multi-track audio application with full bus mastering and directX audio effects. It can also record multi-track audio directly to the timeline.